Many marketing managers and business developments managers have invested money and reputation by advocating social networks as means of marketing.
But the lack of interaction to transaction has been discouraging to say the least. I believe this will change with the latest kid on the block, The Flipboard.
Flipboard, backed by the likes of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Index Ventures, has begun “a quest to transform how people discover and share content by combining the beauty and ease of print with the power of social media”.
And for once this bold statement is true.
Flipboards app for iPad will have people come rushing to the stores to buy the iPad and many more will sign up and start using networks like Facebook and Twitter because it´s suddenly makes sense and puts things in context and is super user friendly.
Flipboard says about their iPad app: “It brings to life the stories, photos, news and updates being shared across Twitter and Facebook.â€
What does this mean for the travel industry?
- Word of mouth is the industry’s big seller and nothing gives people more confidence than a friend that recommends a supplier or destination.
- The Flipboard and the iPad are some of the final missing pieces for social media networks and communities to translate into a transaction.
Presentation and finesse are parts that have been missing for social networks; plainly speaking, it has been ugly and boring. Not so with the Flipboard.
Your own and your network’s messages are presented beautifully. Presentation, ease and beauty sells, ask a gazillion of Apple users.
Travel suppliers will be able to interlink content, pictures and most likely tie that in with some transaction process.
Networks like Tripadvisor will get competition from startups that will aggregate mash up content from Twitter and travel content websites across the web.
Tripadvisor on the other hand has a tremendous upper hand if they, for example, tie in suppliers like hotels, websites and social media feeds and gain consumers loyalty by allowing people to sign in or cross reference their reviews with their Facebook and Twitter profiles. This would give TripAdvisor back their credibility.
For airlines it was never easier to come close to their customers.
For people making their living out of sending traffic to affiliated websites a whole new world of opportunities opens as the transactional web and the social networks finally merges.
There are of course tons of other opportunities and implications out there. The Flipboard is a game-changer. I just found out about the Flipboard this morning and decided to buy an iPad instantly.
Here’s a clip:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vpvEDS00o
Related posts:
- Game-changer? Smartphone manufacturers looking to disrupt travel distribution
- Social media sites overtake search engines: travel must adapt quickly
- STA Travel axes online travel community as power of Facebook takes over
- Stats: Six hours a month spent on Facebook, plus more wild social media data
- Day Eight of Ten – How to build a user experience, not just a website
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I’m interested in why this is a game changer for travel – it’s certainly a game changer in terms of content management and interaction design, it really will serve as a killer app that will help drive iPad sales and is also the first app I’ve seen that truly takes advantage of an always-connected digital magazine…… yet I’m still struggling with the travel angle… what part of travel will this change?
Hey Stefan: where are you getting your iPad from? I’m also in the market, but it’s a bit tough getting one in Cape Town..
Thank you for this Stephan,
I agree that Flipboard will definitely ‘package’ travel info and recommendations better visually.
I liked your example of TripAdvisor vs Startups.
The challenge for the smaller guys to really take advantage of this to drive direct bookings, will still be to have user-friendly websites/enquiry processes. So once the viewer lands a page out of interest from what they have seen from their network of friends, the final push to make the enquiry/bookings
comes from the site itself.
I am loving the idea of this app. Every morning when I wake up I reach over to my phone and check news… then Twitter… then Facebook… then blogs… This might just be the app that drives me to get an ipad.
Something like this could have interesting implications for who your ‘friends’ are on social networks. Suddenly it becomes much more important to only have people whose opinions and links you genuinely like. As apps like this become ever smarter will they foster a much more focussed and selective approach to who we accept as friends in our social networks?
It looks like a great idea and a great UI, my observation is that is a direct slap in the face to the iPad paid App/paid content model… it’s back to web browsing, everyone! Certainly uber cool user friendly UI and all you want, but it’s just free web content browsing.
(Moreover it looks like the content producers would not be able to control their content layout anymore so won’t be able to generate ads rev? Is this the mother of all content scrapers?).
Agree with Matthew Cashmore (1st reply) – what part of travel will this change?
Perhaps a follow up article with concrete scenarios of useage would help in understanding the impact better.
All: Stephan outlines some further thoughts on game-changer Flipboard…>
http://www.tnooz.com/2010/07/26/news/in-defence-of-travel-game-changer-flipboard/